Twas a good day. I am eating too much though, don't want to gain weight back right after I fit into my favorite (size 3!) jeans. Anyway, on to other topics:

I get a lot of guff from people who want me to shut up. I used to be really good at shutting up and keeping secrets. Over time, I have come to realize that as a general rule, when people want you to shut up, it is often for their own benefit and to your own detriment to do so. Which is why they threaten. People threaten when they're afraid. So here's my take on what people take me to task for, namely, talking openly about abuse and general bad treatment. And just so we're clear here, I blab just as openly if I see other people being hurt.

Surviving abuse doesn't make you a victim. Having PTSD, anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, etc as a result of abuse doesn't make you a victim. What makes a person a victim is continuing to cover for the abuser. Keeping quiet about things a person has done to hurt you is cooperating with their abuse and playing into their little game, and dammit, I won't do it anymore. When people who have been abused don't talk about it, it disenfranchises others who are in the same boat. A person who is being maltreated might think that they're all alone, because they have never heard of anyone else going through this sort of stuff, and that's a very lonely feeling, and so, so untrue. Also, wounds that aren't dressed fester and hurt, sometimes to a disproportionate degree. I refuse to continue to experience any kind of pain simply because someone else will feel "uncomfortable" if I acknowledge that yes, shitty things have in fact been done to me. Their discomfort is their problem, not mine. Any shame associated with such events belong entirely to the perpetrator, not the subject of the abuse. It is not weak to admit that bad things have happened, it is strong, because inherent in this admission is the knowledge that this turn of events was unacceptable and has to change. It is the first step to growing out of a toxic, self destructive position into one that is empowered.

Whenever I hear people say that they don't want to hear about (insert child abuse, rape, sexual harassment on the job, discrimination, whatever), my first instinct is to suspect that the person condones that act and has quite possibly perpetrated it themselves. They are too gutless to say that they approve of, say, burning disobedient kids with cigarette butts, so they just target whoever wants to talk about it and say crap like, "Well, I think that's really the parent's business and should be handled in the home, don't you? Before government got involved in the family life nobody thought anything about parents spanking (severe beatings actually) their kids". Which is to say, they beat their own kids and resent that anyone has the balls to criticize that.

I'm not saying that people who are private and have gone through this stuff can't be healthy....but I do question in some cases, whether they have internalized the stuff that happened to them. What I can say is that this is what works for me, and why.

Spent half the day cleaning, the house looked nice for an hour or two, and now the kids have messed it up again. I suppose that is it hadn't been cleaned this morning, it'd be an absolute pit by now. Besides, the tree is up and decorated, and we made a bucnh of refrigerator magnets. I need to find a good source of bottlecaps to make more magnets with. Usually this would be a good excuse to go and buy some nice hard cider or oatmeal stout....but cannot in the here and now, alas.

Thinking: is it possible that a person could be so messed up and overcome with guilt over an event that their subconscious would cause anything else to get messed up and sabotaged? I am thinking it is possible.

I don't know, I just read back through the part in my other blog where my stepdad killed our cat and how guilty I felt over it, even though there was nothing I did to cause its death and virtually nothing I could have done to avert it.....and realized that it has been pretty much the same thing with Daniel Haugen's death. I didn't make him die, and doctors who know about melanoma have already told me he was probably past saving when I met him, so there wasn't anything I could have done to keep it from happening, either.

Now, aside from the fact that he was a 35 year old man and I was a horrifically innocent 17 year old girl that he more or less jilted without even giving a good reason, and aside from the fact that he'd gone to jail for beating his first wife, let's say that it would have been ideal anyway, if things had been different. Still, it isn't my fault he died, and punishing myself for that for the rest of my life is plain silliness.

Been writing a lot on my other blog. It is my way of working through my past and resolving the issues which stem from all that crap. Since....let's see, when was it...I suppose when I switched counselors...I realized that counselors are only there to *help*. They cannot do the actual work of therapy for me. Unfortunately, that is for me to do. They're there for moral support, perspective, and to help keep me from losing my mind. And then, in the past several months, I realized that unless I work on the issues that haunt me, not only am I going to eventually lose it altogether, nothing nice is going to happen, because I'll be so afraid and paranoid and whatnot that even if it did, I would somehow manage to lose it.

Which doesn't make it any easier....but there it is. So with that in mind, I've been devoting a lot more time to the other blog (and in between posts, here, to take a break now and then). And while there is still a lot of work yet to do, I can honestly say that the nightmares have stopped.

And---(related somehow, don't ask me how, but it is), this verse from a Melissa Etheridge song, the full lyrics of which can be found here:
"And when you make the choice to believe in your existence"...

And see, that has been my biggest issue. I don't know how many times I've wanted to kill myself, thinking that because I was an accidental pregnancy, an almost abortion, that I was less of a person, had less of a place in this world, was an imposition upon it. And the awful thing of it is that when you act that way, people begin to treat you that way, too, which reinforces that belief. But now, I am thinking that a: I don't believe in predestination any more and haven't for a very long time and b: Even when a child is planned, nobody knows exactlt which sperm is going to get which egg, so in a sense, it's always sort of haphazard and accidental anyway and c: This is shit! People are people, and I'm not any less of a person and besides which, d: This is a ploy by certain parent/authority figures to transfer the consequences of their mistakes on to me. Do I treat any of my kids that way? No! Therefore, they should not do so either. Good parents don't make kids feel guilty for being born, for crying out loud.....

Anyway, back to the other blog....trying out the tapioca experiment again, by the way....hoping not to get glue this time.

Actually, forget it. I am going to bed. I just logged my 100th post there and I need a little time to think (sleep) before I write more, because things are about to get interesting and messy in that tale.

Strangeness: I am absolutely phobic of snakes. Spiders, bugs, anything else...blood, etc, is fine, but no snakes. I have been known to jump and scream over garden hoses and sticks, to have a panic attack from inadvertently seeing a picture of a snake in a book, and to be rendered absolutely non-functional over seeing a snake, especially if it was unexpected.

And Charlie just brought a book to me, open to a page with about ten pictures and photographs of snakes, and it didn't scare me at all! I found the shapes slightly interesting, but I was not afraid. Not even a little bit. I haven't done any 'work' on this issue lately at all, had given up trying to change it. I am really hoping that this is going to be a permanent thing. I have honestly never seen a picture of a snake without freaking out before.

LOL, so I am a dork.... :-P